STATE OF WARFARE. 373 



perty, it is clear the English Government never wished 

 to impose upon it such a bondage as this. The ques- 

 tion was, not only how the errors of the past were to 

 be repaired, but also what was to be done for the 

 future. What, then, would have become of property, and 

 consequently of farming, which is so closely connected 

 with it, if this plague-spot had first been put upon it 1 

 Some people have been pleased to say that tenant-right 

 has succeeded in Ulster ; but this pretended success 

 proves nothing. For, as Mr Campbell Foster has clearly 

 shown, in his Letters upon the Condition of the Irish, 

 published in 1846, this province contains both county 

 Down and county Donegal, in the first of which there 

 exists comparatively a pretty fair degree of prosperity, 

 and in the latter the extreme of Irish misery. Tenant- 

 right existed in both ; tenant-right certainly : but that of 

 Down was not the least similar to that of Donegal. The 

 first alone was conformable with the English practice 

 the utility of which may be questioned, but which is 

 nevertheless legitimate in many respects ; the second was 

 the real Irish tenant-right, that which has nothing to do 

 with unexhausted improvements. The latter was every- 

 where coincident with the common ruin both of proprietor 

 and tenant, being, in short, nothing less than the actual 

 value of the land, so that the unfortunate individual who 

 took a farm had to pay the sale price for it ; or, in other 

 words, to purchase the property for liberty to pay the rent. 

 Nothing but the imperceptible work of time can account 

 for the establishment of such a singular and fatal anomaly. 

 In its turn, fixed tenure was nothing more nor less than 

 a sale of the land upon the terms of a perpetual rent ; and 

 as that system did not leave the amount of rent to be 

 fixed between the interested parties, but was regulated 

 according to Act of Parliament upon an official valuation, 



